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White House budget breakdown: FY 2015 agency-by-agency funding levels

Wednesday - 3/5/2014, 11:13am EST

Federal News Radio staff

President Barack Obama
released his $3.9 trillion fiscal 2015 budget blueprint Tuesday. The budget
proposal lays out the administration's spending priorities for next year, but
Congress holds the final purse strings and is likely to balk at several of the
proposals.

Overall, the Obama budget conforms to spending constraints negotiated by Congress
as part of a two-year budget deal lawmakers agreed to late last year. But it also
proposes freeing up an additional $56 billion in funding — to be split evenly
between Defense and nondefense — to pay for other initiatives.

Agriculture

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$23.7 billion

▼

7.9
percent below FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposal doubles funding for rural broadband access and provides
funding for new multidisciplinary agricultural research institutes. The proposal
also calls for a 15 percent cut in the $9 billion-a-year farm subsidy program.

Commerce

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$8.8 billion

▲

6 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The administration proposes $2 billion for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration to develop next-generation weather satellites and
$753 million to support research and development by the Census Bureau for
the 2020 census. The budget also includes $680 million for National Institute
of Standards and Technology laboratories.

Defense

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$495.6 billion

▼

0.4
percent below FY 2014 enacted levels

The Army would shrink to 440,000-450,000 troops by 2019, making it the
smallest since just before the U.S. entered World War II. The Marine Corps would
shrink from 190,000 troops to 182,000. The budget proposal also proposes new out-
of-pocket charges for TRICARE beneficiaries and seeks to slightly reduce over time
the military basic housing allowance.

Education

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$68.6 billion

▲

1.9 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposes $200 million for the ConnectEDucators initiative, which seeks
to provide digital learning resources to teachers. The President's budget would
also provide an additional $170 million to the department to lead a "cohesive and
robust initiative" reorganizing the government's STEM initiatives.

Energy

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$27.9 billion

▲

2.6 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposal calls for $11.7 billion for nuclear security, a 4 percent
increase above current budget levels. The majority of that spending would go to a
joint effort between the Defense Department and the National Nuclear Security
Administration to maintain a nuclear deterrent program.

Environmental Protection Agency

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$7.9 billion

▼

3.7 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget calls for EPA to undertake a "focused examination of its workforce
needs." The restructuring will leave the agency with its lowest staff levels in
more than a decade, EPA administration Gina McCarthy said.

Health and Human Services

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$73.7 billion

▼

7.6 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposal would provide $30.2 billion for the National Institutes of
Health to promote innovative medical research. The proposal also fully funds
implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Homeland Security

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$38.2 billion

▼

2.8 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The proposed budget includes $549 million to support the department's EINSTEIN
cyber-intrusion and detection system as well as the Continuous Diagnostics and
Mitigation program. The budget also calls for the creation of a Federal Cyber
Campus to co-locate key civilian cyber agenices "to promote a whole of government
approach to cybersecurity incident response." In addition, the budget provides
funding to hire 2,000 additional Customs and Border Protection officers.

Housing and Urban Development

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$46.7 billion

▼

3.3 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposes additional investments in the federal strategic plan for
combating homelessness. It calls for $2.4 billion for homeless-assistance grants
and $75 million to expand funding for the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing
(HUD-VASH) program.

Interior

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$11.5 billion

⇔

No change
from FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget also would allocate $900 million to support land and water
conservation programs that protect parks, wildlife refuges, forests, rivers,
trails, battlefields, historic and cultural sites. The budget also includes $300
million in federal funding as part of a three-year, $1.2 billion plan to upgrade
and restore national parks in honor of the 100th anniversary of the National Park
Service in 2016.

Justice

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$27.4 billion

▲

0.7 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The proposed budget would provide $8.5 billion in funding to maintain federal
prisons and detention facilities and calls for the creation of a new FBI
laboratory in Alabama to analyze bombing attacks. The budget would also provide
$13 million so the FBI can maintain improvements made to the National Criminal
Instant Background Check system.

Labor

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$11.8 billion

▼

1.7 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The proposed budget aims to streamline federal training programs. Currently, the
are more than 40 such programs spread across agencies. The proposal also seeks
nearly $1.8 billion for the department's worker-protection agencies. In addition,
the proposed budget aims to save $340 million over 10 years by making changes to
the workers' compensation program for federal employees.

Social Security Administration

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$12.1 billion

▲

3.4 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget would make investments in SSA's customer-service operations, proposing
$100 million in a modernization initiative to make improvements in online and in-
person services. The proposed budget would also fund improvements in coordination
between the agency and the Office of Personnel Management to cut back on
overpayments .

State and USAID

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$42.6 billion

▼

0.2 percent
below FY 2014 enacted levels

The budget proposal includes a $4.6 billion request to secure overseas personnel
and facilities, including $2.2 billion in security construction at U.S. diplomatic
missions.

Transportation

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$14 billion

▲

2.2 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The proposal includes $302 billion over the next four years for road, bridge, rail
and transit programs. The administration's budget request would also ramp up
spending on the Next Generation Air Transportation System to overhaul the air
traffic control system nationwide. The program would get an extra $186 million,
raising the total "NextGen" budget for next year to about $1 billion.

Treasury

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$13.8 billion

▲

5.1 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The bulk of proposed additional funding goes to the Internal Revenue
Service.
The budget calls for IRS to receive $12.5 billion — a $1.2 billion increase
above current levels. That would fund customer-service improvements at the agency,
including increasing the number of taxpayer phone calls the IRS is able to answer,
from about 61 percent of calls to 80 percent. The budget would also up the
agency's enforcement budget, which the administration estimates generates an
additional $35 billion in tax revenue.

Veterans Affairs

Proposed 2015
Funding

Comparison

Highlights/details

$65.3 billion

▲

3 percent
above FY 2014 enacted levels

The bulk of the department's discretionary spending — $56 billion —
would go toward veterans' medical care. Obama seeks a 2.7 percent increase in
medical spending as the number of patients treated at VA hospitals and outpatient
clinics continues to rise. Obama seeks to spend $312 million on technological
improvements in hopes of eliminating a longstanding backlog of disability claims.